It included trying to prove that some ethnic groups are linked to criminality. “The stereotypes about the respective characteristics of different groups, such as sexes, races, nationalities, are generally found to be quite accurate,” he wrote. Students, lecturers and university workers held protests, petitioned, and got Carl dumped.

Their victory should spur anti?racists to drive the racists out of other universities.

Carl should never have been appointed in the first place. But he isn’t an isolated problem.

He had been a participant at the London Conference on Intelligence, hosted by an honorary lecturer at UCL. Other participants included Richard Lynn, who has argued for “phasing out” of “populations of incompetent cultures”.

This is a sign that the far right is trying to normalise its ideas.

After the horrors of the Holocaust, right wingers have to be more careful about openly using scientific racism.

Far right youth groups today, such as Generation Identity, peddle newly revived myths. Defeating them requires debunking their claims but also mounting big campaigns on campus that expose them for the racists they are.